Favourite Star Trek fact... that is not true.

There is no reason to set her aside. She was on the show, a female, in a command position. Roddenberry's ulterior motives don't change that fact.

Edited for clarity: I just realized the post I responded to was edited just before I hit the quote button. The above sentence is referring to Number One from the Menagerie because that's who the quote from Tenacity originally referred to rather than 'a few exceptions'. /edit

Also the idea that women can't be captains yet can be lieutenants is obviously ridiculous on the face of it. The chain of command requires that lieutenants be able and allowed to take command if they're the ranking officer in a crisis. We even saw Kirk leave Lt. Sulu in command of the whole ship on TOS (and we saw Uhura in command of the ship on TAS).

And we now have Philippa Georgiou set a decade before TOS. Not to mention Erika Hernandez in the 22nd century, who presumably did not get casually demoted to Lt. the second Earth's starfleet was folded into the Federation Starfleet.

 

Yeah, but it just makes "Turnabout Intruder" stupid and ill-conceived.

 

Sorry, I should have clarified that we now know there were female captains based on later shows and movies. And Enterprise of course had Captain Hernandez of the Columbia. The novel I was referring to was written after we knew all that and it was an attempt by the novel writer to explain Lester's comments in light of what we now know--a sort of retcon I guess you could call it, but it fits in. And we know Janice Lester didn't have all her marbles so it's an explanation that happens to work in retrospect.

 

Yeah, as over the top as Shatner was as Lester, Smith did do a good job as Kirk.

 

Thinking about the U.S. military at the time (if I'm not mistaken, and I'm not an expert), women were largely relegated to separate chains of command from men. They had jobs they could do, but they were mostly different jobs than men. So just putting women and men in the same chain of command would be progressive for the time.

Obviously, the idea that women can't command starships has been retconned away. And you can certainly dismiss Lester as an unreliable narrator. But from watching the episode, it seems pretty clear to me that the intent at the time was that women couldn't be starship captains.

 

That doesn't work very logically when the first woman ever shown was first officer of the Enterprise and the first to actually air was a bridge officer on the Enterprise. No separate chain of command in sight. Turnabout Intruder was just bad.

 

That's what I mean when I say that putting them in the same chain of command was, for the time, progressive.

IIRC, Number One was one of the reasons the original pilot was rejected. Female viewers thought she was too uppity. "Who does she think she is?" was a common reaction. That certainly says something about society at the time.

 

No, that was just one of the many lies Roddenberry told, NBC had no problem with Number One, they just didn't like Majel Barrett (who they considered to be a weak actress and more importantly they didn't want Roddenberry's mistress as a main character on the show). Roddenberry could have recast, dropping the character was his choice.

 

Hm. I was thinking I read that in The Fifty-Year Mission, but I don't recall for sure. It's entirely possible that I picked up a piece of legend based on a lie passed off as fact.

 

If Roddenberry said something, you need at least five corroborating witnesses to know for sure it is the truth.

Inside Star Trek by Robert Justman and Herb Solow is a great book about the original series. Though even it has some inaccuracies.

 

If it can power a warp drive, cloaking device and plasma weapon... it doesn't sound like a clunker to me.

 

First to air was The Man Trap, Spock was the first officer.

Arguably a separate universe.

Set a century before the TOS era, cultures definitely can change in that much time.

Not really, there would as be the consideration of experience and qualification. If the highest remaining officer was medical personnel, they don't take command.

Officer of the deck.

Modern day, the vast majority of commissioned officers will never be placed in command of a ship. And also not all first officers go on to be placed in command of a ship either.

In The Cage, if Pike had been killed, while this would have left Number One in command, it would not have made her captain, nor would it have automatically given her the rank of captain.

Again modern day, you don't become the appointed commanding officer of a ship simple because you're the top survivor. The decision would be from Starfleet's command structure.

 

How appropriate that the story about Number One would crop up in this thread as fact when it's actually a perfect example of the false facts this thread is chronicling.

 

Don't feel too bad. That's what millions of Trekkies did for decades.

 

I was talking about women in Starfleet, not Spock. The first woman known to be in SF back then was Number One, first officer of the Enterprise ten years before TOS. The first woman to air on the show was Uhura, bridge officer on the Enterprise throughout TOS, holding the same rank as some of the other officers who were seen commanding the ship in various episodes with no indication whatsoever that she was in any way outside the chain of command.

No.

That would be change in the exact opposite direction that Star Trek has always claimed culture changed throughout that period. And then immediately changing back right after TOS, to boot. Pure nonsense.

Like Uhura. The point was not that medical personnel (or anyone else outside the chain of command) would be right in line for command. The point is that Star Trek has never kept women out of the chain of command in the first place. Number One and Uhura are both part of it right from the very beginning.

And? Any officer who is part of the chain of command can find themselves in command. Any officer who can be placed temporarily in command can be placed permanently in command. Whether most of them ultimately are placed in command or not is irrelevant. Any women anywhere in the chain of command is obvious proof that women can be captains, even if by some bizarre fluke there were no specific woman captains at any given point in time.

As already mentioned, that's irrelevant. Anyone who can inherit command can also be given permanent command. Whether they ever actually are given it or not makes no difference to whether they're allowed to be a captain, as they clearly are allowed or else they would never have been trained for command in the first place.

 

That just illustrates how badly conceived TI was.

 

• Unless I missed it, no one has mentioned that "Beam me up Scotty" was never said in the series.

I don't understand all this back and forth about Janet Lester. The episode is very clear that women are not allowed to captain starships (note that Kirk agrees that it is not fair). People can try to retcon it with a modern sensibility all they want, but the intent of the writer and actors is clear.
Bear in mind, a starship was not just any warp-capable ship in Star Trek. It was a certain type of capital ship. Most ships, including most starfleet ships, were not starships. I believe there were only 12 or 13 in the fleet.
50 years later, the role of women in combat is still somewhat divisive. Is it so hard to remember that it seemed perfectly normal (if not acceptable) to audiences of the '60s that a woman might not be allowed to command the military's most powerful ships?
Other false facts:

• McCoy went to Starfleet Academy

Doctors, of course, generally do not go to military academies. They get commissioned through OCS after medical school. The writers of TOS knew that, since they had served. Most of the current writers are clueless.

• The names Penda Uhura and Walter Sulu
• MLK personally begged Nichols to stay on

This one might fall under "gross exaggeration". Nichols' story grew more and more involved with every telling. First it was that she heard he liked the series. Then it was that he called her. Then it was that he sought her out in person and told her how important her role was.
Nichols is a beautiful woman, inside and out, and I regret that she's going through hard times lately, but she started believing her own BS very early on.

• Bad blood between Shatner and Nimoy
• Bad blood between Shatner and the gang of four during the series

The gang of four knew they were glorified spear carriers during the series. This was no ensemble cast; William Shatner was the star. Once the convention phenomenon started in the 70s, fans started blowing smoke up their skirts, and it went to their heads. They started to resent Shatner when everyone told them that they were the real stars of the show. They weren't. Shatner did a fascinating interview of Walter Koenig a few years ago, in which Koenig goes into the source of his resentment, and how he's over it.

 

Where is it canonically established that McCoy Prime did not go to Starfleet Academy? We know canonically that Kelvin Universe McCoy did go to the Academy, by the way.

 

Kirk being a womanizer always made me laugh. Usually it was the women who threw themselves at Kirk and Kirk said many times he had one true love, The Enterprise.

 

Ultimate Computer. And yeah, Kelvin universe was created by people who don't know what they're doing.